


In So Many Words

by ilookedback



Series: Hyggetober Challenge Ficlets [13]
Category: Prospect (2018)
Genre: F/M, a little bit of sex, ezra is a little bit of a stray cat, not really sad but a few people have said this fic made them cry, overuse of em dashes and run-on sentences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:36:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27009721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilookedback/pseuds/ilookedback
Summary: He comes and goes as he wishes, floating in and out of your life, your house, your bed, fitting himself into your old kitchen chairs and sliding his lithe body between your sheets with all the comfort and grace of someone who lives there, someone with a fixed place in the universe that happens to fall right between your thighs. He makes a place for himself and as soon as he almost seems settled, he disappears again and you go about your days, knowing better than to wait for him to return.
Relationships: Ezra (Prospect 2018)/Reader
Series: Hyggetober Challenge Ficlets [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1952407
Comments: 11
Kudos: 38





	In So Many Words

**Author's Note:**

> For day 13 of my Hyggetober Ficlet Challenge, which is based off of [this prompt list](https://www.instagram.com/p/B201-j7ljdU/?igshid=1pflwcl5260me) and will span several Pedro fandoms. Today's prompt is "writing."
> 
> First ever attempt at Ezra, whom I find incredibly intimidating to try and capture!

Ezra is ephemeral. He comes and goes as he wishes, floating in and out of your life, your house, your bed, fitting himself into your old kitchen chairs and sliding his lithe body between your sheets with all the comfort and grace of someone who lives there, someone with a fixed place in the universe that happens to fall right between your thighs. He makes a place for himself and as soon as he almost seems settled, he disappears again and you go about your days, knowing better than to wait for him to return.

It was weeks after the first time he left that you found the note, tucked between two pages near the end of the book you’d been reading for that week he’d been around. He would find something to do with his hands, some broken electronic gadget to fix or a knife handle to whittle, or he’d keep very still and close his eyes and lay his head in your lap, and he’d murmur to you to read it out loud for him to hear. After he’d left you set the book down for weeks, too afraid of aggravating the tender ache in your chest, the pulled muscle of your heart, when you thought about opening it. And then one day, you’d been _angry_ and you had picked it up determined to read it, or at least to hide it on a shelf if you really couldn’t stand it any more—and the folded slip of paper had tumbled out, drifting to the floor like a lonely snowflake, something that could melt and disappear in your hands if you let your fingers touch it too hotly, so you’d held it by the edges and flattened the paper onto the table and read—

_Starshine—  
When you read this I will be on my way, yet seeking to find the fortune that has, to this point in life, continued to elude me. When I have found it I will come back—or before then, or later—I am drawn to your fine hospitality and your finer eyes and only know I cannot stay away—_

_Unless you will not have me back. And that I would indeed understand. But I pray you will have mercy on this old soul and allow me to return, a richer and wiser man—or lacking that, you may hope, one more humble at least._

_Holding you in my highest regard,  
Ezra_

He had returned, months later, and you had opened the door to him and found him neither rich nor humble, but his mouth was all the hotter for having stayed away, mumbling poetic praises into your skin, deep voice rasping over you like the stubble on his face brushing over your back, threatening to leave a burn where it landed, some mark you could see in the mirror to remember him by.

What you didn’t see in the mirror came to you later in the mail instead, stamped with the most exotic postmark you’d ever seen. The letter made you blush, dirty prose describing his memories of your touch, the sweetness of your mouth, the heat of your cunt clutching around him. He would never forget, he told you, for as long as he lived, the impressions his teeth had left on the soft of your breast and the way your voice had caught in your throat crying his name— _it rings in my ears in the dark of night and I confess I indulge in the memory of that sound more often than any of the other kind words and good advice you have offered, treasured as they are_ —and the clean, fresh scent of your pillow where he’d laid his head.

It goes like that, sort of a pattern without a pattern. He flits in and out of your life, and sometimes he leaves a note, and sometimes he does not, and sometimes he sends a letter, and sometimes he sends three before you next see him again. Sometimes his words are intimate, make you feel—loved, almost, like he is holding you close to his heart. And other times the letters are written in a moment of boredom, killing time between one port and the next. And sometimes you resent how much better those are still than silence.

There is a long time with nothing from him and you start to let him go.

When the next letter arrives, his handwriting has changed. His normally flowing script has turned boxy and hesitant, and the letter is short—three brief lines but it ends with the word _home_ and you feel your heart in your throat, something shaky in your hands when you put this letter in the little box where you’ve collected all the others, these solid pieces of himself he’s given you to keep while the rest of his presence has been so fleeting.

And when you see him he has changed. You spot it right away, the empty space where his right arm had been, but when he draws closer you see it in his eyes, too—something gone quiet and deep and older there. He is tired, you can tell just from his face, but he pulls you close with his left arm, cups his hand around the back of your neck to hold you steady, and he kisses you slowly like he’s breathing you in, settling in to the spaces of your body where he has always had a place.

And he doesn’t leave again for a long time after that.


End file.
